Course Catalog

Online Curriculum

Required Public Health Core and Breadth Courses

PHW200E: Health Policy and Management

You will learn about health policy and management and health care delivery systems, primarily from a United States perspective. Discover how health policy and management applies concepts from economics, organizational behavior, and political science to the structure, financing, and regulation of public health and the health care delivery systems.

Session(s) Offered: Summer 1

PHW200F: Intro to Environmental Health Science

Explore environmental agents and factors that contribute to disease in developed and developing countries: i.e. furniture flame retardants, combustion of biomass fuels, or the design of buildings and communities. You will receive an overview of core concepts and their applications in exposure assessment, toxicology, epidemiology, and risk assessment.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 1

PHW200G: Health and Social Behavior

With a focus on major social, cultural, and bio-behavioral determinants of health as they relate to behavioral interventions and policies, you will explore key concepts and important approaches in health and social behavior; assignments will culminate in a final group project involving a community health issue.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 1

PHW142: Introduction to Probability and Statistics

Through instruction, you will develop the skills necessary to carry out simple statistical analyses and interpret statistical results, with a focus on the role of probability and statistics in public health. The course is designed to be interactive and to provide opportunities to learn to “speak” statistics.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 2

PHW250: Epidemiologic Methods

Intended as a first class in epidemiology, you will study the principles and methods of epidemiology, including descriptive and analytic approaches to assessing the distributions of health, disease, and injury in populations. The emphasis is on developing an understanding of concepts, rather than quantitative methods, although calculations are involved.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 2

PHW289: Interdisciplinary Seminar

This multidisciplinary course draws from current topics and emerging competencies in public health professions to guide you in the tools and practices that lead to better solutions. The topics are delivered by discipline experts with whom you will engage in hands on workshops, lectures, and gatherings during a week long campus visit.

Session(s) Offered: Summer 1

health policy and management courses

PHW227A: Healthcare Finance

Through a case study format, employing the quantitative functions in Excel, you will gain the basic financial and accounting skills needed by all health professionals. Consider financial decision making in an applied manner, interpret financial statements and ratio analysis, and conduct investment assessments in discounted cash flow, healthcare pricing strategies, and cost-volume-profit/break-even analysis.

Session(s) Offered: TBD

PHW224: Organizational Behavior and Management in Health Care

A solid understanding of organizational behavior is critical for managing complex demands and arrangements in public health organizations. Through exploring the active theories and perspectives in management and organizational theory, you will gain a solid comprehension of a diverse set of frameworks and theories relevant to understanding healthcare delivery and public health organizations.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 1

PHW220M: Health Policy Methods

Building on 200E and using an analytic, case-based approach, this course provides a deeper understanding of the political context from which U.S. health policy emerges, with a focus on methods. The course will build skills for conducting formal policy analysis, exploring the entire policy process from the identification of a problem and evaluation of possible policy solutions to techniques and formats for policy communication. We will touch on evaluation methods, the role of research and evidence in forming health policy, and the relationship between implementation science and policy.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 2

PHW226A: Health Economics

The U.S. spends a great deal on health care, yet has relatively poor health outcomes, quality of care, and equity. You will examine how this situation can be improved by analyzing markets and government policy, including identifying contexts where the free market operates relatively well versus poorly and debating the role of government in health and healthcare.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 2

PHW226C: Economics of Population Health

Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis tools are applied to the evidence base for population health interventions and policies. You will engage with community and clinical preventive services, systemic population health management innovations, behavioral economics approaches, and policies targeting upstream social determinants of population health.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 1

** Note that students may not take both 226C & 226F for credit. Please only register for one of these courses. **

PHW223: Strategic Management

The focus is on your development of leadership skills in strategic planning, analysis, and implementation. Emphasis is placed upon the leader’s role in simultaneously taking into account a wide variety of internal and external factors to improve organization and system performance in meeting the health needs of individuals and communities. Prior professional or coursework experience required.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 2

PHW226F: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

This course teaches cost-effectiveness analysis and related tools in a 1 unit compact 3-week online format. You will learn when and why to use alternative economic evaluation methods to assess benefits relative to costs of health policies and interventions. You will also learn to interpret and critique such analyses, and to conduct basic Cost-effectiveness analyses.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 1

** Note that students may not take both 226C & 226F for credit. Please only register for one of these courses. **

global health courses

PHW209: Comparative Health Systems

Using the Murray-Frenk health systems framework, you will engage in a real-world, practical analysis of health systems, along with engaging in current debates about health systems, health financing, and UHC in the international community. Assess health system performance based on quality, cost, and access metrics.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 1

PHW212: Foundations of Global Health

You will apply essential concepts of global health to current challenges through course activities, assignment, and readings. Guest lectures will present global health experts detailing real world initiatives, encouraging critical thinking approaches through the application of tools and frameworks that address diverse global health needs.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 1

PHW213: Global Health Ethics

Ethical frameworks, theories, and historical references are used to elevate the ethics conversation to the global stage, linking theory to practice in research, experiential learning, and delivery. Consider ethical questions about the delivery of global public health and the roles of governments, academic institutions, organizations, health professions, and citizens as stewards of public health.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 2

Epidemiology Courses

PHW250B: Epidemiologic Methods II

You will further your exploration of principles and methods of epidemiology, including descriptive and analytic approaches to assessing the distribution of health, disease, and injury in populations and factors that influence those distributions. The emphasis is on concepts, rather than quantitative methods, but some basic calculations will be involved.

Session(s) Offered: Fall semester

PHW290: R for Public Health

You will examine the principles and methods underlying the use of R, emphasizing multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and “real world” uses. Throughout the course, You will learn real-world principles of data collaboration using R through discussion of case studies as well as through an applied project.

Session(s) Offered: Fall semester

PHW236A: Regulatory Science, Drug Development, and Public Health

In Regulatory Science, Drug Development, and Public Health, you will be armed with the knowledge to address the most important health practice and product regulation issues in the U.S. and abroad from the perspective of the current regulatory standards, their standards for evidence, and the role of innovation in regulatory science.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 2

PHW253: Outbreak Investigations

You will learn why and how clusters of illnesses/epidemics are investigated. Methods and approaches required for such investigations will be discussed in detail, with a specific focus on basic concepts, developing case definitions, laboratories, surveillance, epidemiology of outbreak data, hypotheses, and communication of results, all in relation to outbreak investigations.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 2

PHW257: Public Health Preparedness and Emergency Response

Building upon the competencies of epidemiology and biostatistics, we will explore surveillance, mitigation, preparedness, and response and recovery (from natural and “man-made” emergency events). You will develop familiarity with the major categories and classifications of disaster events, including weapons of mass destruction, including how the public health system integrates with the National Response Plan and Framework.

Session(s) Offered: Summer 1

PHW260: Infectious Diseases

More than 1400 different infectious diseases recognized today are distinct from other diseases because they affect all human organ systems and contribute to the burden of many other types of disease: 175 new such diseases have emerged in the past 30 years. You will explore the framework through which all infectious disease problems can be addressed.

Session(s) Offered: Fall 1

Spatial Data Science for Public Health Courses

PHW272A: Intro to GIS for Public Health

You will be introduced to principles, methods, and techniques that empower you to process, manipulate, and visualize spatial data. As maps become an increasingly powerful means of communicating the spatial complexity of health and disease data, public health practitioners can increase the impact of their work by using GIS to convey information and synthesize data from multiple sources.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 1

PHW272B: GIS for Public Health Practice

You will be exposed to the application of GIS technologies for rendering disease surveillance maps, developing effective spatial data visualization, creating compelling, credible spatial risk maps, and acquiring/processing positioning information for health applications. Learn from examples demonstrating the spatial characterization of social and environmental conditions, such as poverty and water quality.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 2

PHW272C: Applied Spatial Data Science for Public Health

Spatial analysis is a powerful set of techniques for describing patterns of health and disease through locational data. As locational information is aligned with health data, public health practitioners increasingly rely on geo-data to increase impact. Develop proficiency in applying GIS to PH data and perform a wide variety of space and space-time analyses.

Session(s) Offered: Spring 2

community health sciences courses

PHW218: Evaluation of Health & Social Programs

Though exposure to the “life course” of a public health evaluation, from initial planning to implementation and sharing results, you will design an evaluation that informs program and policy decisions, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Small groups will work together to develop a real-world evaluation plan

Session(s) Offered: Spring 2

PHW219: Social and Behavioral Health Research: Introduction to Survey Methods

You will practice survey research in its different forms, including traditional pencil-and-paper surveys, telephone interviews, and web surveys. Using a project topic of your choice, you will develop a survey instrument and write a research plan to use that instrument. Start thinking about one of your favorite public health research areas!

Session(s) Offered: Spring 1

PHW204: Mass Communication in Public Health

You will employ digital innovations and social media to promote healthy behaviors and policy in 6 online weeks. Several guests will visit the online class, including public health professional who are currently engaged in new media and digital communications activities.

Session(s) Offered: Summer 2

PHW206: Maternal and Child Health Nutrition

You will be presented with the major nutritional issues faced infants, children, adolescents and reproductive age women in the United States. Course topics include programs and interventions aimed at improving MCH nutrition, evidence based MCH nutrition practice guidelines, application of knowledge to food choices at a personal and programmatic level.

Session(s) Offered: Summer 2

PHW205: Program Planning

You will build the necessary skills to plan effective
public health programs through examination of the principles and methods underlying program
planning; With an emphasis on multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and “real world” planning processes,the course offers a real world application of program planning principles, along with through critique and discussion of case studies.